Abstract
H. G. Wells’ Time Traveller inhabits uniform Newtonian time. Where relativistic/quantum travelers into the past follow spacetime curvatures, past-bound Wellsians must reverse their direction of travel relative to absolute time. William Grey and Robin Le Poidevin claim reversing Wellsians must overlap with themselves or fade away piecemeal like the Cheshire Cat. Self-overlap is physically impossible but ‘Cheshire Cat’ fades destroy Wellsians’ causal continuity and breed bizarre fusions of traveler-stages with opposed time-directions. However, Wellsians who rotate in higher-dimensional space can reverse temporal direction without self-overlap, Cheshire Cats or mereological monstrosities. Alas, hyper-rotation in Newtonian space poses dynamic and biological problems, (e.g. gravitational/electrostatic singularities and catastrophic blood-loss). Controllable and survivable Wellsian travel needs topologically-variable spaces. Newtonian space, not Newtonian time, is Wellsians’ real enemy.
Highlights
Physical travelers into the past must be Gödelians or Wellsians
Pace Grey (1999), Le Poidevin (2005), absolute-time travel is possible if space is sufficiently accommodating
Any process that requires spatiotemporally discontinuous inter-stage links arguably does not involve bona fide travel. This papers argues that extended Wellsians cannot maintain correct inter-stage causal links unless space has extra dimensions or variable structure
Summary
Physical travelers into the past must be Gödelians or Wellsians. The former follow spacetime curvatures; the latter reverse temporal direction relative to absolute time.. Newtonian and relativistic physics seemingly forbid Gödelians and Wellsians respectively. Can absolute time admit backward time travel or is curved spacetime required?
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